Elissa Strauss has written for the Forward over a number of years. She is a regular contributor to CNN, whose work has been published in a number of publications including The New York Times, Glamour, ELLE, and Longreads.
Elissa Strauss
By Elissa Strauss
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Culture How ‘Sh— Girls Say’ Changed My Life
Earlier this month a humor video called “Shit Girls Say” hit the web. I found it mildly amusing, but not necessarily funny or cutting enough to deserve the over 7 million hits it would get in a few weeks. But then it kind of changed my life. The shtick with “Shit Girls Say,” which began…
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Life In Defense of the ‘Hot Jewish Women’ List
In her post on Complex.com’s year-end list of the 50 hottest Jewish women, Naomi Zeveloff warns against the persistent lust-ridden fascination with Jewish women. Me, on the other hand — well, I am still kind of digging it. Are men’s magazines crude and often misogynistic? Yep. Are ethnic fetishes, as Zeveloff point out, incredibly reductive?…
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Life Prime Ribs: Zarin v. Babs; Marc Jacobs v. His Mom
Some not-so-endearing news from our favorite Jewish fashion designers: Marc Jacobs tells Vogue that he hasn’t spoken to his mother in over 20 years (my mom launches a re-unification campaign if we don’t speak for two days), and Donna Karan gets in trouble for her new ad campaign set in Haiti. Hat tip to Jezebel….
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Life Jeffrey Goldberg, Walmart and The Atlantic
Dear Jeffrey Goldberg: You recently wrote a piece for Bloomberg in which you call Crystal Bridges, the new museum built by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, a moral blight. Your column notes that “many of the paintings in Crystal Bridges hang in eloquent rebuke to the values of the company that has made the Waltons so…
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Life L’Chaim: Drunk on the B-Word
“OMG, you ARE a bitch! Be-atch! No, no, in a good way. Seriously, I love you. You are the best. Want a glass of wine? I bet you like wine. Bitches love wine!” This, I suspect, is how marketers imagine women who imbibe speak to one another. Why else would they, as The New York…
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Life Why Infertility Breeds Silence
Redbook magazine recently teamed up with RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association to launch “The Truth About Trying,” a new video campaign to get women talking openly about infertility. The magazine produced a funny and touching video with stars like Sherri Shepherd and Padma Lakshmi speaking candidly about their struggles to conceive, and some 50 Redbook…
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Life Prime Ribs: Kat Dennings Is My Homegirl
Actress and my new favorite Jewess Kat Dennings tweets: “Every time a magazine Photoshops my nose, a Nazi gets its wings.” Israeli couples are looking to create more egalitarian wedding ceremonies while still staying within the confines of Jewish law, but it isn’t easy, reports JTA. Some rabbis make the women take mandatory “bride classes”…
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Life Katie Roiphe Gets (Part of) it Right
Katie Roiphe’s call in the New York Times for more tolerance for risqué behavior and dirty jokes at work inspired a pretty unanimous dismissal in the feminist blogosphere. (DoubleX, Jezebel, Pandagon, Feminisiting, and here on the Sisterhood.) In her piece, Roiphe declares that our limited tolerance for the capacious concept of sexual harassment, which could…
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